


Choose Your Own Dominion

by Cephalopod



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Biology, Cannibalism, Choose Your Own Ending, Gen, Grubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 6,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cephalopod/pseuds/Cephalopod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of terror, self-determination, and lunch. Guide the Condesce from her wiggling day to nascent tyrant--or steer her into the jaws of doom and save humanity. Your call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seaside_Soul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaside_Soul/gifts).



> ***DO NOT READ THIS STORY FROM BEGINNING TO END.*** 
> 
> Each chapter is one section, and they are NOT in order. Choose your next step from the options given and use the "Chapter Index" button above the fic header to find and navigate to the indicated chapter.

 

It's been a busy few weeks for you since you hatched. You're hungry pretty much all the time and you have to eat and get bigger and start ruling things--you don't know why you have to start ruling things, but you know it's almost as important to you as eating is. Fortunately eating is a lot easier, since you've got a big heap of clutchmates wriggling around. Some of them are slow. They're also nutritious, and you grow fast. It seems like a pretty good start for them, you think as you explore the shallow pools and sandy crannies of the caverns. They died so you could live, and that's a better gig than most people ever get. At least you think it is. You're a little new to this.  
  
The brooding caverns aren't very big. There's a little crack you can just squeeze through that drops you off a ledge into a pool, then a channel, then another pool, and then you're out of the caverns entirely and into the ocean outside. The first time you realize where you are, you scramble back in as fast as you can, but you remember that crack. And when the trials you've heard people whispering about start, when the adults start bringing in big loud things you don't recognize and you see a half-dozen clutchmates get fished out of their pool and dropped into a cage with something that's pretty much made of hair and teeth, you make a break for it and you're out in the ocean before anybody misses you. You figure that was your trial, right there, the biggest and most important one anybody could ever succeed at: figuring out how to avoid the trials. You have transcended the trials entirely. You are the most qualified grub. Time to get a head start on ruling things.  
  
It turns out the world is a pretty big place, which is great, but you're already starting to suspect that it's filled with people doing things wrong. You've already swum right past a few seatrolls down here, and not a one of them recognized your authority no matter how hard you flapped your fins and displayed your tyrian frill. One of them tried to squish you. You're probably going to have to get a little bigger before they take you seriously. Time to find something else to eat! Good thing you're in the ocean and there's lots of stuff around.

**Dive into a giant clam and rummage** : go to CHAPTER 27.

 **Follow the school of little fish** : go to CHAPTER 5.

 **Head back to the seatrolls and demand tribute** : go to CHAPTER 9.


	2. 2

Pearls are played out anyway; anybody can get a pearl any time they want. You tell yourself you totally don't care, but as your first and only piece of swaggy bling drops slowly out of sight into the yawning gulf of a mouth...you feel a hitch in your throat.  
  
You tell yourself you'll get more. MUCH more.  
  
The mouth closes and it's a long moment before it opens again to make a sound like a rockslide: heavy, rumbling, and so low-pitched you don't so much hear it as feel it in all the little hollow parts of your collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system.  
  
 _GOOD_ , it says. _MORE._  
  
You tell the white beaky mountain that you don't have any more, that you're still really new at this, and its eyes narrow and focus on you.  
  
 _YOU WILL LIVE TO BRING ME MORE,_ it says. _GO._  
  
You're about ready to tell it that you've subjugated it and you're not going to bring it anything unless it asks a lot more nicely than that, thank you very much, when it raises a ridiculously tiny little you-sized tendril and...pets your face. It feels nice.  
  
 _SHH ,_ it says.  
  
And then it swallows you.

 

 **Go to** CHAPTER 25 **.**


	3. 3

The ocean is definitely the superior option; you feel right at home.  
  
The current tickles your frill as you swim along, happy as a clam that just had something really good happen to it. You wonder what counts as a good thing to a clam. For lack of anything better to do you drift down to the seafloor and poke around for some. Clams are easy to subjugate and honestly at this point you think that level of domination and tyranny is a little beneath you, but...there's no harm in practice, is there?  
  
There's a whole heap of really big ones just under the lip of a ledge of corals, so you rule them a little bit. You demand tribute, but they're jerks and they close up and don't seem likely to shell out--ha ha, shell out, that's a good one--any time soon. You'll have to do something about that. If you can't get respect from a clam, how can you expect to get respect from anything with a thinkpan?

 

 **Browbeat them into submission** : go to CHAPTER 8.

 **Flip them the birdfish** : go to CHAPTER 21.

 **Sweetly explain to them the error of their ways** : go to CHAPTER 23.

 **(if you have a fork) Extract tribute by force** : go to CHAPTER 14.


	4. 4

Sweet, you're totally conquering the surface world! This is a patch of sand on a peninsula that barely sticks out of the water at high tide, but it's got a tree--YOUR tree--and there are a bunch of shoals with fish and there's some coral over there that you're going to have to deal with later. Coral is a colony organism with anywhere from a few dozens to several thousands of individual critters per body; you're going to have to make a policy decision on whether you want to subjugate them individually. Are you a quality-over quantity tyrant? This is important stuff. This stuff has _ramifications._  
  
Before long you've got chapped fins, the start of a sunburn, and a few square meters of brand-new territory. Huzzah! You've also got a decision to make about whether you want to head inland or return to the ocean.

  
 **Stay dry?** Go to CHAPTER 6.

  
 **Get wet?** Go to CHAPTER 3.


	5. 5

You chase after a school of little fish, all of which are still bigger than you are. Most grubs would consider trying to eat things bigger than you a bad idea, but as far as you're concerned you're going to rule this whole ocean with an iron fist when you're big enough so these fish need to learn what's what anyway.  
  
It takes a long, long chase, but eventually one of them zigs when it should have zagged and you pounce. Bingo! Its schoolmates abandon it immediately and leave you to chew; you start with the face and work your way back and by the time you're halfway to the tail you're stuffed and happy and starting to feel snoozy. You spit out a few fragments of liver grit and cuddle up on the rest of the carcass to surf along on a current and digest.  
  
When you wake up, you look around and realize you have no idea where you are.

 

 **Go to** CHAPTER 18 **.**


	6. 6

You head inland, wincing a little bit as you get calluses on your tender tyrannical fins in places you've never had to get calluses before. The beach gives way to forest, and the forest is scary. You almost get eaten by a bird before you find a leaf to hide under.  
  
And then you almost get eaten by a hissbeast, and then you almost get eaten by something that you only ever see the mouth of, and you've definitely got a sunburn and you tell the forest as softly as you can that you're in charge and you run back to the ocean as fast as your fins will carry you. Now you know. _LAND IS STUPID_.  
  
You jump back in the ocean, but jump out again to flip off this land stuff before you go. You're officially swearing it off forever and once you conquer the ocean you're going to head straight from the ocean into OUTER SPACE. So there. Land can suck it.

**Go to** CHAPTER 3 **.**


	7. 7

The ocean is really, really big. It's so big you can get lost in it, which you do. You lose track entirely of where you are and where you've been and it's pretty much all horrible and you kind of don't want to rule it anymore and you curl up in some kelp and you cry a little.  
  
Eventually you stop blubbering and start to get a little angry: this ocean is _STUPID_. This ocean is a JERK and you hate it and you're going to subjugate it EXTRA HARD just to show it that you won't put up with it making you feel bad.  
  
Filled with renewed purpose and tyranny, you swim off toward the horizon for several hours and subjugate a whole bunch of microscopic particulates, three jellyfish, and a baby shark on your way before you drift snoozily to the ocean floor to take a much-deserved break.  


 **Go to** CHAPTER 18 **.**


	8. 8

You summon up all your reserves of rhetorical prowess and you just excoriate those clams. You give them what for. You tell it like it is. You lay down the law, which is the easiest part because the law is you.  
  
The clams sit there. You wonder if they heard you.  
  
It dawns on you that in order to tyrannize your population effectively, you're going to have to learn a little subtlety. Yes, you expect to have your orders obeyed and everything, but maybe there's a little room in your absolute rule to deal with what a conquered race can and can't do physically. You couldn't order these clams to fly, for example, and expect to be obeyed. You'd look silly.  
  
So you order them to stay right there, to do absolutely nothing, and they do exactly that. The clams lie there like rocks, and you are pleased with this. They are following your orders perfectly and they shall be rewarded. Except for the flat one with stripes on the end; that one's cracking its shell a little and there's no way you can let that sort of insolence go unpunished.  
  
Time to make an example. And what better way to show what happens when you disobey orders than to give an order that can't be obeyed? You are SO GOOD AT THIS. You drub your little fin on the surface of the shell and order that clam to fly. SMACK!  
  
It claps its shell open and closed, open and closed, and it flies away from you.  
  
...well, damn.  
  
So much for that. From now on, you're going to ignore conquered races whining about not being able to do what you want them to do. You're going to ignore the _ship_ out of that. Heh, ship. Nautical puns are awesome.

  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 3 **.**


	9. 9

With a mighty waggle of your tiny fins, you hustle back to the little lagoon you just left to lay down the law. You don't really know what the law is yet, but you're pretty sure that it involves doing exactly what you say so you're going to start with that one.  
  
There's a pair of seatrolls here behind a seaweedy outcropping all tangled up and doing things with their faces that look like one or both of them is going to be food. That means leftovers! You don't want to interrupt while they're fighting like that, so you just sort of hang out behind a piece of coral for a while and wait for things to work themselves out.  
  
You wait a while.  
  
They keep doing face things. Eventually they start doing things with parts on their stomachs that you don't recognize. This is the slowest fight ever.  
  
You keep waiting. Eventually they stop moving and there's sort of a blood smell in the water and you think finally, they're BOTH food. You swim over to get a few mouthfuls before anybody else notices all the choice scrounge. The bigger one looks tastier, so you bare your teeth and prepare to dig in.  


 **Go for the face** : go to CHAPTER 13.

 **Go for the gills** : go to CHAPTER 20.


	10. 10

You were already hungry. You're pretty much always hungry, because you have to grow up big and strong and pupate extra hard and be the best tyrant ever, but now you're STARVING. You think you might actually die. Your stomach is making these little wheezy sounds you'd think were funny if you weren't so hungry.  
  
But there's no food within sight right here, so there's only one thing to do: swim until you see something edible.

 

  
 **If you don't have a fork:** go to CHAPTER 28 **.**

  
 **If you do have a fork:** go to CHAPTER 19 **.**

  
 **If you remember the taste of mustardy sauce from the seatrolls:** go to CHAPTER 24.


	11. 11

Ah, the warm lagoon you left behind what seems like so long ago when you were so tiny. And it turns out you were right about the trials! There are heaps of grubs here, some of them paffing around in the shallows like that's some big deal and most of them wriggling around up on land making screechy sounds at each other. You swim nearer to shore, through the shoals of thick green seaweed, and as your eye passes over the menu you catch sight of the biggest, juiciest-looking grub you have ever met. You didn't even know grubs got that big. He's up on a rock with a few other grubs by the water's edge, just sort of lolling around in the moonlight, and oh wow.  
  
You could have that grub for like, three whole meals. Four meals, if you could eat those stupidly big horns he's got. Which you can't. Your mouth waters.  
  
No more delay, you're hungry! You strike! You launch yourself forward through the water and rear up with a mighty splash and a roar of fierce dominion, your mighty tyrian frill displayed to best effect and your teeth razor sharp! It's such a cool pose you have to hold it for a few seconds to let everybody get a good look at you. It'll be their last chance, after all.  
  
The big one makes a screechy honking sound.  
  
And then just like that he reaches to one side, grabs a smaller grub sharing the rock with him, and...bites it in half.  
  
He holds half out to you. It's the half with the face on it. The grub's last expression was one of utter terror.

  
  
 **Take the half grub:** go to CHAPTER 16 **.**  
  
 **Take both halves AND the big guy:** go to CHAPTER 15 **.**


	12. 12

It's the brooding lagoon for you. It's nice and warm there, and it looks like lots of your siblings have gotten a head start on you and started pupating already. You can't let that stand. You'll have to pupate extra hard and extra fast so when they come out, the first thing they'll see is you. You, in all your glory, telling them exactly what to do and where to go. You pick an empty spot of rock and hum yourself to sleep with happy thoughts of complete domination over all you survey.  
  
Over the next day and a half you feel your skin harden and congeal, your eyes dimming and your mighty tyrian blood slowing inside you until it stops. The awareness of your surroundings that you took for granted as a grub is slowly eclipsed by a lethargy that is the closest thing to death a living organism can experience. You have no senses. You have no knowledge of yourself. You have no thoughts, no feelings, no brain to think them with or body to feel them with as the body that once contained you is now a thin container for the processes that dissolve you and from your component parts assemble the new form that will grow into you as an adult. You are a cocoon.  
  
You are utterly helpless.  
  
Fortunately, the adult trolls minding the cavern know this, and they slosh through the lagoon periodically to keep predators away. These trolls are probably the closest thing you'll ever have to loving parents of your own species, but you never so much as see their faces. And because you're a cocoon, they never see yours.  
  
You grow fast.

  
  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 30 **.**


	13. 13

Jackpot! You get a nice big mouthful of cheek and it tastes great!  
  
You're too new to have heard that joke about the last thing that goes through a fly's mind when it gets hit by a flyswatter. If you'd heard it, what happens immediately after you bite off more than you can chew here would have an extra, poignant layer of meaning. Unfortunately as your lunch carcass demonstrates that it's not a carcass by raising a hand and reflexively mooshing you into grubsauce, you're unprepared to appreciate the irony that yeah, just like the joke says, it's your butt.  
  
Whoops.  
  


** THE END **


	14. 14

You know what, it's time for the direct approach. Screw diplomacy. You get your fork right the hell in there and you wedge one of those big juicy bastards open and there's more meat inside than you could eat in a coddamn week. You gorge.  
  
You bathe in the actual literal blood of your subjects, which is less exciting than it seems like it should be because clam blood is pretty much clear. You need better subjects, you think, contentedly doodling a little smiley face on your stomach with some greenish-black goo you found in the clam's guts. Oof. You are stuffed as full of tribute as any growing tyrant could possibly hope to be. When you get big, bigger than you are now, you're going to carry one of these around. A clam. As a symbol of your might and fierce predations.

 

 

  
  
Heh, that's cute. It would still be better if it wasn't digestive sludge. It's not like you're going to have a whirlpool tub full of the life-giving essences of your conquered population, color-coded by the day of the week or anything, because who does that really? You just want to know that if you decided you really felt like it, you _could_. That's the important thing. Having options. Being in charge is all about having more options than other people. When you're in charge you're going to have all the options. _Every single one._

  
You spend a few hours digesting, and you swear you can feel yourself getting bigger right there. You're probably imagining it, but your adventures have kept you pretty well fed and you're a lot bigger than you were when you hatched...maybe it's time to start thinking about pupating. You'd better go looking for a good rock.

 

 **Go to** CHAPTER 24 **.**


	15. 15

Oh shell no. Half a grub? _HALF?_ Who does this guy think he is?  
  
Screeching mightily, you leap again with your fangs bared and your frill splayed to the absolute maximum. Nobody tries to cheap out on your tribute and lives to tell about it! The legends people will tell about you in hushed tones begin here and now, right here on this rock. You'll see to that.  
  
 _SCREEEEEEEEEE_ , you say.  
  
 _SCRAAAAAAAAWNK_ , says the big grub. And then he catches you.  
  
And he bites you in half.  
  
Whoops.  
  


** THE END **


	16. 16

You accept this sweet tribute and munch it happily, face-first. Your new favorite subject chews on his half while you do that, and you notice that even though he's more than twice your size he gave you the bigger half of the grub.  
  
You like this guy. This guy knows how to deal with tyranny.  
  
After you're both done, you hold up a fin. He bops it with his claw. As you swim off, stuffed with nice fat grubly nutrition and the warm cozy sense of absolute power, you make sure to memorize the other grub's features. Purple blood. Sort of intent-looking. Big horns. You're going to have to keep him around.  


 **Go to** CHAPTER 29 **.**


	17. 17

Proudly, you hold up your fin for your newest subject to smack in a convivial-yet-obsequious manner. It's still kind of a shock when the resulting blow from a tendril that looms up out of nowhere is so ridiculously overpowered that it knocks you up and out of the water entirely, across several leagues of ocean surface:

PCHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

 

...and into a surprisingly soft landing in the fronds of a palm tree on a desert island.  
  
You decide that you're totally keeping that subject around, and drop to the ground to explore.

 

 **Go to** CHAPTER 4 **.**


	18. 18

This is really, really deep. You've never been down this far before—you haven't even tried. It's dark, super-cold, and it twinkles with light from the phosphorescent parts of things that aren't much bigger than you are. It's pretty.  
  
It also turns out that you're parked on top of a mountain. A white one. It goes down as far as you can see. It also looks kind of weirdly like a beak, so it's not as surprising as it could be when the ground opens underneath you and you find yourself hovering over an open mouth. Beak. Thing. You're new to this. Anyway it's HUGE.  
  
And then it opens a mouth beneath you, a mouth the size of something so big you don't even have something to compare it to, and it opens glowing eyes on either side. And it talks.  
  
 _WHAT DO YOU HAVE FOR ME_ , it asks.

  
  
 **Offer it a high-five** : go to CHAPTER 17.

 **(if you have a pearl) Offer it a pearl** : go to CHAPTER 2.

 **Flip it the bird (er....birdfish?)** : go to CHAPTER 26.


	19. 19

It sure is handy that you found this badass piece of armamentation, isn't it? You love your fork. There may be many others like it, you honestly don't even know, but this one is yours. Eeeee. You rub it on your cheek a little, delighting in how satisfyingly heavy and pointy it is. The only problem with your fork, you figure, is that there's a whole extra end on it that isn't a fork. Maybe you should fix that.  
  
Later, though. You're hungry.  
  
You head down deep, because that seems like a productive and glamorous thing to do, and before long it gets dark. Really, really dark. It makes you feel small, but in a good way: small in a way that reminds you of how AWESOMELY HUGE your empire is by comparison. And your empire _is_ awesomely huge. It's this whole ocean. Plus a part of an island. That is just, you can't even. You can't even convey how big that is. SO BIG. You? You're small. Physically. Your power, however, extends in all directions.  
  
You're enjoying this train of thought a lot when you notice a red glow and tumultuous bubbling down below, even deeper. And not too far away. You swim down, enjoying the increasingly toasty temperature of the surrounding water and the rich chemical tang of sulfur and carbonic acid and things that you also don't know the names of but that give your gills that zingy feeling. It looks like smoke down there.  
  
It's a crack in the ocean floor, a whole rack of gently glowing chimneys sending up huge plumes of hot stinky black water and absolutely fishing _covered_ in little plumey worm things in tubes. Score!~  
  
You haul several of these worm things right out of their tubes with your fork and you use the tines to toast them up nicely in the ridiculously hot water coming up out of the vent. You wouldn't want to stick your fins in there, that's for sure, but oh cod these things are so good when they're cooked. It's enough to make your little head spin a little, and you're pretty sure that it's not just from the sulfur. Cooking is the best thing ever. EVER. When you're in charge you're going to make damn sure that everybody knows that cooking is both EASY and DELICIOUS. Coddam. _YES._  
  
You stuff yourself, and then you and your fork have to go have a little bit of a lie-down.  


 **Go to** CHAPTER 29 **.**


	20. 20

You're trying to shove past a droopy, relaxed gillflap when it stiffens back up and nearly traps you underneath it. You squirm back out, just in time! Your lunch-carcass is sitting up now, looking really angry.  
  
"I'm hungry," you tell it.  
  
It flaps its earfins and looks at the other not-actually-a-carcass-at-all, which is also sitting up and making a heh-heh noise you've never heard. This is certainly an educational cultural experience with people you're going to rule with an iron fist! Doesn't change the fact that you're a growing grub, though. You're still starving.  
  
You show off your tyrian frill again, just so they know how fierce you are. You open your mouth nice and wide at them, just in case they misunderstood you.  
  
"You've got to be kidding," says the bigger one. You hiss at it.  
  
The smaller one reaches into a pocket and pulls out a piece of something white with something mustardy on it. "Come on, it's just a wiggler. Give it this and it'll fuck off."  
  
The big one hands over the goods and you munch happily, swimming in big fancy loops to show off how much you value your subjects' tribute and fealty. You've got a speech ready in your head before you realize they're ignoring you to do that thing with their faces and you're not about to sit around and wait for them to go through the whole procedure again, so you swim off for deeper waters.

  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 7 **.**


	21. 21

You twist your fin into an insulting gesture and point it at the clams. You're not really sure what you were actually expecting, but their reaction to your disapproval is disappointing by any measure you can think of.  
  
Yeah, they're clams. They pretty much just sit there. You tell them that you expect them to do better next time and swim off, cutting your losses before you're forced to deal with some serious re-evaluation of your oppression technique.  


 **Go to** CHAPTER 24 **.**


	22. 22

You dive down, cloaked in darkness and chill and grim determination. There are tons of rock outcroppings: you pick the one that you think looks most like you and you grab on.  
  
Over the next day and a half you feel your skin harden and congeal, your eyes dimming and your mighty tyrian blood slowing inside you until it stops. The awareness of your surroundings that you took for granted as a grub is slowly eclipsed by a lethargy that is the closest thing to death a living organism can experience. You have no senses. You have no knowledge of yourself. You have no thoughts, no feelings, no brain to think them with or body to feel them with as the body that once contained you is now a thin container for the processes that dissolve you and from your component parts assemble the new form that will grow into you as an adult. You are a cocoon.  
  
You are utterly helpless.  
  
Therefore, it should be no surprise that at some point in your pupation, a hungry crustacean plucks you from your solitary mooring and takes advantage of the fact that you're little more than a pod of chunky, nutrient-rich slurry.  
  
Whoops.

  
  
** THE END **


	23. 23

A warm current, warm enough to set the nearby corals budding off little egg bundles that float like petals, sets your frill waving and reminds you that maybe you need to be a little warm once in a while too. A little soft. Gentle, even.  
  
You spend some time pointing out the positive side of your rule to the clams, acknowledging their objections (there aren't any) and establishing that tribute to you is really tribute to themselves, to the greater good that benefits everybody from you down to your lowliest subjects of all.  
  
Other creatures respond to the current similarly, opening and relaxing and blooming into season with little trickles of gametes--which is to say, future subjects. How sweet of them! You're clearly getting through, here. And it's really pretty, too. The clam next to you opens wide, wide, and you watch contentedly for the gentle exhalation of opalescent fumes.  
  
HOLY CRAB IT'S LIKE A _@#$!# FIREHOSE_ AUGH AUGH AUGH _YOU ARE COVERED IN CLAM SPOO_ GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFFFFFFF

  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 3 **.**  
  
 **([helpful reference image](http://www.flickr.com/photos/birchaquarium/4596032721/) :) )**


	24. 24

There! That faint scent in the water, you know that scent! That's the delicious yellow sauce that your worshipful subjects gave you as tribute after you found them rubbing parts together behind a rock!  
  
You could seriously do with some more of that yellow sauce. You swim quickly toward the source of the smell, which looks like a lagoon or something: there's a sandbar you have to go around but you'd swim further than that for another taste. You're humming a happy lunching tune to yourself as you round the corner of the sandbar, looking forward to stuffing yourself sick.  
  
....oh cod.  
  
The lagoon itself is a murky mustard-yellow with splotches of rust. Huge, shadowy shapes lurch here and there and slosh through a flotsam of floating blobs. You flap some of the muck out of your eyes and swim up to look at the blobs a little more closely. They're just a little smaller than you...  
  
OH COD OH SHIP OH SHIP  
  
THEY HAVE FACES.  
  
YOU _REMEMBER_ THOSE FACES.  
  
These are some of the poor schmucks you ditched back in the brooding caverns, the ones who had to take the trials while you've been being productive and laying the foundation of your empire! They're all gross and chewed-up or squished or just kind of dead and floaty and even if they're super lowblooded and you'd have happily eaten them anyway there is no way you're going to eat them like this. Not even if they smell absolutely delicious.  
  
You decide you're never going to eat yellow sauce again.  
  
The shadowy shapes slosh closer. You realize they're boots. A sluice of more dead grubs and slurry pours down over you, and you hear someone up there say something while you're flailing around, frantically trying to get your tyrian frill untangled from the guts trailing out the back half of somebody.  
  
"Live one," it repeats. The boot mashes through the surface to crush you against the packed sand of the lagoon floor.

Whoops.

 

** THE END **


	25. 25

It's huge and dark in here, inside the mountain, but as you swim downward and downward you see sparkles of things that got here before you: glowing things and wiggling things and...blinking things? Okay, so it's actually really creepy. But at least it's creepy in a sparkly way, so you keep going.  
  
It takes long enough that you're starting to get hungry again when you finally get to the bottom, or whatever part of the mountain this is. It's a huge cavern and it's...  
  
...oh, wow.  
  
IT IS FILLED WITH GOLD AND BONES AND MORE GOLD AND MORE BONES AND ALSO SOME GOLD  
  
You roll around on it for a while before finding a little fork thing that's just your size, which you totally steal. Or, more accurately, which you accept as fitting tribute. **Hell yes.**

 

 

**Hell.**

**Fucking.**

**Yes.**  
  
You keep poking around and eventually you find an opening that leads out, and you try not to think too hard about what kind of opening it was. You had to push pretty hard.

 

 **Go to** CHAPTER 10 **.**


	26. 26

No way are you giving this big white mountain thingy anything. It should be giving YOU things, which is exactly what you tell it as you twist your fin into a rude gesture and wave it around. You're in charge here.  
  
The eyes on either side of the beaky thing narrow at you.  
  
 _WHAT,_ it says.  
  
You tell the beaky monster mountain thing that it heard you.  
  
 _YES, BUT_ says the beaky monster mountain. _ I'VE SEEN SAND LICE BIGGER THAN YOU._  
  
You make a pfffffft sound. You tell the mountain that size is so not important, you're still in charge and you're going to fix everything starting with the fact that it doesn't think you're in charge and you're going to do it right now. And then you thump it on the beak. You thump it very hard. As hard as ever you can.  
  
Your all-too-short life has just enough time to flash before your eyes as an enormous tentacle whips out of nowhere and pulps you against the side of the beak. You leave a tiny tyrian smear, but it washes away quickly. Whoops.

 

** THE END **


	27. 27

You find a giant clam and dive right in to dig around for goodies. What a haul! There's a half-digested clump of some weird but delicious benthic goo and a pearl the size of your head in this thing! The clam closes up, of course, but this isn't a problem for you. You chow down.  
  
Afterward, sitting back with a nice full stomach, you try to find some way to wear the pearl as a hat. It keeps rolling off. You're so engrossed in trying to get it arranged right in your frill that it takes you several minutes to notice the whole clam is moving. It takes a few hours after that for the clam to stop moving and calm down enough to open up so you can climb out with your sweet loot.

  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 18 **.**


	28. 28

You wiggle along, keeping a sharp eye out for easy pickings such as your nearest relatives. You haven't eaten a sibling since you left the caverns, and to be honest you miss it. You've been eating and growing but you're still a pretty small little tyrant, and if there's one thing you can count on to be nutritious and slightly smaller than you it's probably another grub.  
  
You head back toward the caverns you were so keen to escape from in the first place, which takes a while but promises to be rich pickins once you get there. The trials must be done by now, right? You have no idea how long they last, but when you left it looked like nearly everybody was in serious trouble, so...  
  
If nothing else, you guess, they'll have run out of grubs by now? Wow. That's a pretty hardcore thought. You're proud of yourself for thinking it. You're going to have to think hardcore thoughts more often. A few come to mind:  
  
CONSUME  
  
OBEY  
  
Hmm, yes, that's a good start. What else?  
  
MUFFINS  
  
...where did that one come from? Well, whatever. You're almost to the caverns.

  
  
 **Go to** CHAPTER 11 **.**


	29. 29

You've gotten so big and come so far! You should be proud of yourself, which of course you are. You're headed for great things. But your skin feels tight these days, and you're a little itchy and cranky, and you're pretty sure what this means is that you've got to find a place to take the next step and make your cocoon.  
  
It's a big deal. You know this instinctively. You've never done it before, of course, but you feel it all through your collapsing and expanding bladder-based vascular system that it's probably the most important decision you've had to make in your entire life. Those other decisions? Those were just warm-ups for this one. Fortunately the choice is pretty binary. It all comes down to finding a rock and sticking yourself to it, but...where?  
  
  
 **That one. The one way down in deep water. You'll be safe down there and no one will even notice you until it's too late.** Go to CHAPTER 22 **.**  
  
 **That one. The one by the lagoon with lots of other cocoons. When you hatch with the others you'll have an army ready to do your bidding.** Go to CHAPTER 12 **.**


	30. Chapter 30

You hatch. Again.  
  
The moon is rising over the lagoon. You nearly fall forward into the shallow, warm water as you finish peeling off the carapace but both of your legs hold up and, slowly, you stand with your feet spread wide on the sand. Other freshly-hatched seatrolls around you are doing the same, but when they see you their knees fail and they splash down into the shoals. You don't know why, but you know that this is as it should be.  
  
On the shore, there's a crowd of trolls who hatched before you. You know them. You know that scent, that waft of warmer blood and warmer color that tells you everything you'll ever need to know about who they are and what they need. You raise a hand, and your frill shifts behind you in the water, heavy. You ignore it.   
  
" _ **OBEY** **,**_ " you say. It's your first word.  
  
First they fall to their knees.  
  
Then they rise, as the moon does, and they're yours.

 

You rule.

  
  
** THE END **


End file.
